♦

Except for the occasional sceptic, we all believe that things persist through time (Loux, Readings, p. 321).

Endurantism and perdurantism are the views that temporal persistence of a thing is respectively explained either by its existing wholly and completely at different times or by its having three-dimensional parts at different times, which constitute a four-dimensional whole – or ‘spacetime worm.’ Since these two views arise from two different temporal ontologies, namely that of presentism – only the present exists – and eternalism – time is a dimension on par with the spatial dimensions – I shall treat endurantism and perdurantism as interchangeable with their corresponding ontologies.

Since I am torn on this issue rather than trying to convince the reader I shall devote this essay on an analysis of why perdurantism, which is the view to which I lean the most, appeals to me but why I am still hesitant to embrace it fully.

Scientific Considerations

I should be a perdurantist because I believe that GPS is reliable and that the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old. The connection to persistence is not immediately obvious. However, both beliefs are reliant on Einstein’s theories of relativity. In his book, Parallel Worlds, Michio Kaku explains how crucial relativity is to the reliability of GPS.

[I]n order to guarantee such incredible accuracy, scientists must calculate slight corrections to Newton’s laws due to relativity, which states that radio waves will be slightly

shifted in frequency as satellites soar in outer space. In fact, if we foolishly discard the corrections due to relativity, then the GPS clocks will run faster each day by 40,000 billions of a second, and the entire system will become unreliable (p. 257).

Likewise other physicists will tell us that at least some of their methods for ascertaining the age of the universe (Kaku mentions three experimental “proofs,” p. 282) are derived from Einstein’s theories. Another iconic example of relativity impinging upon us is the famous experiment conducted by astronomer Arthur Eddington in 1919, which verified that the Sun distorts spacetime around it and thereby deflects rays of light as predicted by Einstein (French, pp. 44-45).

The crux of the matter is that the results of relativity are seemingly so inescapable to anyone living in the 21st century that we all take them more or less for granted. Yet few of us ever follow up on this acquiescence by allowing it metaphysical ramifications. I should perhaps not speak so readily on behalf of everyone else. However, I – for one – am painstakingly aware of my own cognitive blind spots. To be sure, relativity is built around a four-dimensional model of space and time.

The salient question is to what extent it makes sense to ignore the connection between the results and the assumptions that produced them. Loux, while explaining that this connection used to be a common line of perdurantist argument, expeditiously diffuses it again in the same breath.

The claim is that the endurantist account fails to square with our scientific understanding of that world. The claim is that a four-dimensional picture of the world is implied by the physics of relativity theory. Since the idea that time is just another dimension on par with the three spatial dimension leads so naturally to a theory of temporal parts, the claim is that the only way of accommodating our scientific beliefs about ourselves and the world around us is to embrace a perdurantist theory of persistence through time. This line of argument was once quite popular. It is not, however, the one we characteristically meet in recent writings of perdurantists. In part, I suspect, recent perdurantists are sensitive to the very real difficulty of extracting an ontological theory out of the mathematical formalisms of physics; but the more central reason recent perdurantists do not rest their case on facts about scientific theories is that they are anxious to show that our ordinary, prescientific beliefs about the world are not, in fact, at odds with the perdurantists’ talk of temporal parts (Loux, Introduction, p. 243).

Now, I readily concede Loux’ point that it is problematic to extract ontology out of mathematics. I ought to clarify that I am not proposing the reliability of GPS as a persuasive argument for perdurantism nor do I pretend to understand theoretical physics. It is not within this essay’s scope to venture into the quagmire of scientific realism versus instrumentalism. And any philosopher worth her salt knows that one might arrive at a factually correct conclusion by valid inference from false premises. From the fact that certain assumptions make physicist’s numbers add up, nothing need follow about the veracity of those assumptions.

However, my proposal is that if I were to deny four-dimensionality on these grounds simply because I do not care for the metaphysical implications, while still happily retaining other fruits of relativity, it would make me hypocritical at worst and incongruously compartmentalised at best. As such, this is not an argument for perdurantism but an account of its pull on me personally. I feel I ought to accept it – at least tentatively – unless I have a particularly good reason not to, simply for the sake of intellectual integrity. How persuasive this is to anyone else depends whether the person in question shares a similarity in disposition.

Default Intuitions

Let us turn to what Loux’ central reason for casting aside the scientific argument for perdurantism. Throughout ‘Concrete Particulars II’ in Introduction (pp. 230-56) Loux consistently describes endurantism as cohering more than perdurantism with ‘commonsense,’ ‘intuitive conceptions,’ ‘prephilosophical beliefs’ etc. Taking this line of thought further in Readings (pp. 321-29) Loux states:

So endurantists take theirs to be the account of persistence that conforms better to our prephilosophical intuitions. Evidently, perdurantists agree; for whereas endurantists are content merely to state their view, perdurantists feel the need to present arguments on behalf of a temporal parts account of persistence.

This reasoning strikes me as all sorts of odd. An image of a boulder-pushing Sisyphus vividly springs to mind – wherein the very act of increasing his efforts immediately slopes the hill ever so more to his detriment. Surely, any endeavour of philosophy is wrongheaded if the act of arguing one’s view entails a proportional opposition of intuitive common sense. The game-breaking strategy would be to never budge an inch from offering only a ‘says me!’ in one’s favour, since anything more would constitute tacit concession of loss.

Nevertheless – burden of proof aside – it is not simply obvious that Loux is right about our intuitions. At the risk of committing armchair arson and becoming an ‘experimental philosopher’ I asked a few of my non-philosopher friends where they stood on the existence of the past, the present, and the future. While this can hardly be considered statistically significant the divisiveness of their answers was still astounding. The only consistent agreement was on the existence of the present – the oddest answer being the existence of present and future but not the past.

However, appeals to our shared intuitions – though illuminating – do not exert much toll when it comes to the fundamental structure of reality. I am not even convinced by my own intuitions. Although neither would they help Loux since they align themselves with perdurantism to a certain extent.

Past Events

I should be a perdurantist because I believe past events are a matter of fact. Intuitively once something has happened it stays happened. Even if no one remembers it and it imparts no influence on current events, there is still a fact of the matter. This to me can only be sufficiently accounted for by the reality of the past.

An obvious presentist contender would be a very strong determinism – i.e. A determined the occurrence of B, determining C etc. So even if A is long forgotten, we might be able to infer it. However, while determinism is intuitively understandable, it is not so obvious that backwards-working determinism makes sense in a universal context. Consider this by analogy of addition; while adding three to three strongly determines an outcome of six, working our way backwards from six is impossible. The outcome of six could not have been otherwise. But looking back from six we are unable to decide whether the correct six-producing mechanism was indeed three plus three and not, say, five plus one. It is hardly obvious that there is one, and only one, chain of events that could possibly have produced the current state of affairs of our universe.

Yet the mere conceivability of backwards determinism could still serve as a counterexample wedge between my intuition of past events and the requirement of perdurantism. Let us therefore, for the sake of argument, assume backwards determinism. Would that be enough to account for the factuality of past events? I would say no. To return to our alphabetical series, we can imagine that A occurred simultaneously with another event, A² – also producing a simultaneous B². However, at the advent of C, B² somehow failed to produce a C². No event in our second series ever had any interaction with our first series. Even given backwards determinism we would have no way of inferring that A² and B² ever happened.

Fatalism

I should not be a perdurantist because it commits me to fatalism. Now, it is a glaring omission that my preceding considerations said nothing of the future but – not unlike people – dwelt only on the past. Indeed, I am unable to intuitively commit to perdurantism based on the reality of the past because my intuition balks at the notion of an already existing future. Loux would have me believe that I could hold this view in unproblematic consistency.

Consider what we called the growing block theory of time. On that view, reality consists of the past and the present. What counts as the past and present is always changing, so the view is an instance of the A-theory; but as we have seen, the view endorses a four dimensionalist picture of what it calls reality; reality is a four dimensional block that is constantly growing. Within this framework, then, concrete particulars turn out, once again, to be spacetime worms. Accordingly, we once again have a theory of time that is not just compatible with perdurantism; the theory provides a natural home for that theory of persistence (Introduction, p. 235).

However, Loux might have failed to convince himself.

Endurantists will argue, for example, that the perdurantist claim that the spatiotemporal boundaries of a familiar particular are essential to it runs counter to intuitions we all share. We all believe, for example, that it was possible for Winston Churchill to have lived a day longer than he actually did; and we all believe that each of us could, at any time, have been in a place other than the place we actually were in at that time (p. 256).

I am quite convinced though that a growing block cannot be the case. A four-dimensional view of spacetime necessarily entails fatalism. The reason is that growth requires the very time we have done away with literally into empty space. When a three-dimensional block grows it is, according to the perdurantist, a progression through temporal parts of its four-dimensional self. The only way a four-dimensional block could grow would then have to be by progression through temporal parts of yet a higher fifth-dimensional self. One could argue for timeless change but I have no idea what that means.

I now face a dilemma of accommodating all my intuitions. I should not only have to spatialise time but I should also have to introduce yet another dimension – possibly even more. Alternately I could bite the bullet and accept a fatalistic universe – in which case I have no choice in the matter, so I might as well refuse. Incidentally Einstein seems to have taken seriously both the entailments of his theory and the stubbornness of his intuitions.

I am a determinist, compelled to act as if free will existed, because if I wish to live in a civilized society, I must act responsibly. I know philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crimes, but I prefer not to take tea with him

(Kaku, pp. 154-55)

A Multiplicity of Entities

In a past essay of mine about the teleological argument I said that:

Accepting the actual existence of many worlds in order to escape the existence of God seems arbitrarily discriminatory (unless you are a quantum physicist and therefore believe that there is bona fide evidence for a multiverse).

Similarly I was disinclined to arbitrarily discriminate against only one aspect of relativity – namely four-dimensionality – merely on the grounds of disliking the metaphysical implications. However, turning this on its head I should be disinclined toward perdurantism because it is quite arbitrary to continually populate my ontology with ever more dimensions simply to appease my gluttonous intuitions.

I have argued that my everyday beliefs and intuitions (layman’s scientific and prephilosophical) ought to demand of me perdurantism. However, I have also argued that perdurantism has counter-intuitive implications, which complicate my ontology to accommodate. Ultimately I should like some more tangible evidence of higher dimensions than intuitive reasoning and mathematical convenience before making a metaphysical commitment.

♦

Bibliography

Books:

• French, Steven, Science: Key Concepts in Philosophy (London: Continuum, 2007)
• Kaku, Michio, Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos (London: Penguin Books, 2006)
• Loux, Michael J., Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, third ed., 2006)
• Loux, Michael J. ed., Metaphysics: Contemporary Readings (London: Routledge, 2001)

Websites:

• Experimental Philosophy website, <http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jk762/ExperimentalPhilosophy.html>
• Sepahi, Sketch, Puddles, Black Holes & Fungi, <http://sketchsepahi.com/blog/archives/99>

♦

The defensibility of bundle theory depends on the definition. I shall flesh out a minimal definition and consider three objections, two of which can be handled expeditiously. The third I shall argue is equally a problem for substratum theory, after which I shall attempt a solution based on my own interpretive definition.

♦

Bundle theory is described as concrete particulars – ordinary objects – being constituted of properties. However, this is a broad outline and details vary between presenters. As such ‘bundle theory’ is more an umbrella term of loosely associated theories than a single well-defined theory. It is tempting, therefore, to assert that its defensibility is solely dependent upon – to borrow a phrase from Van Cleve – which ‘unpacking of the ‘bundle’ metaphor’ we are partial to (p. 28). While containing a grain of truth, such a blunt dismissal would nevertheless be premature. However, it is worthy of note since the dance between the theory’s detractors and proponents follows a general pattern.

Ideally detractors should wish to show that certain objections can be raised against any version of bundle theory. Since most are proponents of substratum theory, this usually pans out in attempts at required inclusions of bare substrata. These attempts consist of finding some feature of concrete particulars which cannot be accounted for by mere reduction to properties. The counter step is then taken up by the proponent of bundle theory; usually in an attempt to show that ‘Aha! You failed to consider this particular redefinition, which deftly avoids your objections like so-and-so.’

This makes the dance intricately interesting but unfortunately also renders a definitive analysis nearly impossible.

Sophisticated defenders of the bundle theory do not say that a thing is nothing but a bundle of properties; they say that it is a bundle whose elements all stand to one another in a certain very important relation. Let us call the relation co-instantiation (Van Cleve, p. 29).

The nature of this relation therefore takes centre stage in our considerations. The issue of defining bundle theory (and by extension its defensibility) is compounded by a further schism between realism and nominalism, which effects the applicability of certain objections. Loux, for instance, holds that the ‘Identity of Indiscernibles’ objection applies only to realist versions of bundle theory (p. 97). However, I am more interested in where the objections lead than in our starting point.

So returning to our important relation, it requires elaboration.

[…] however it is labelled, the relation is treated in the same way. It is taken to be an unanalyzable or ontologically primitive relation, but it is explained informally as the relation of occurring together, of being present together, or being located together; and it is always construed as a relation that attributes enter into only contingently (Loux, p. 91).

To make a recap of bundle theory then, it is the proposition that a concrete thing is wholly reducible to attributes and the contingent relation they share by mutual occurrence. In contrast substratum theorists agree with bundle theorists that a concrete particular is reducible to attributes and their mutual relation; they disagree about the ‘wholly’ part. Instead substratum theorists argue for the inclusion of a bare substratum, ‘that functions as the literal bearer or possessor of the attributes (Loux, p. 87).’ Allaire uses the example ‘this is red,’ which the substratum theorist would take as a subject-predicate proposition where ‘red’ refers to a universal property and ‘this’ is the literal exemplifier of that property (pp. 1-2).

This might seem a bit puzzling and an uncharitable reaction is to dismiss it as an example of what Whitehead called ‘the fallacy of misplaced concreteness (Irvine; Loux mentions ‘it is raining’ as an example of a doerless doing, p. 93, though without referring to Whitehead explicitly).’ However, we would then fail to take into account what I consider the true motives behind each opposing stance. The motives of substratum and bundle theorists alike seem to arise from a disconcert with the opposed position rather than merely the merits of their own. A short passage by Russell draws upon the worries of both parties.

The continuity of a human body is a matter of appearance and behaviour, not of substance. The same thing applies to the mind. We think and feel and act, but there is not, in addition to thoughts and feelings and actions, a bare entity, the mind or the soul, which does or suffers these occurrences. The mental continuity of a person is a continuity of habit and memory; there was yesterday one person whose feelings I can remember, and that person I regard as myself of yesterday; but in fact, myself of yesterday was only certain mental occurrences which are now remembered, and are regarded as part of the person who now recollects them. All that constitutes a person is a series of experiences connected by memory and by certain similarities of the sort we call habit (pp. 42-43).

The crux of the matter is our intuitive conception of identity – in this case the temporal persistence of personal identity – which riles us ever more once we realise that some madman might include us among the concrete particulars to be dissected! And although the existence of bare particulars does not necessarily entail the existence of souls, it would be quite benighted to gloss over the similarities; one being that empiricists ought to find both equally problematic. On the other hand, whereas an ineffable anchor to some inaccessible reality is brutish, it is not desirable that the ship of Theseus dissolves into the ocean entirely – even if today it has a different mast than yesterday.

What we have just outlined is the temporal persistence objection to bundle theory, which features among five other objections in Van Cleve’s paper. However, Van Cleve readily abandons the first three at the advent of ‘co-instantiation (p. 29).’ The three objections left are: the temporal persistence, the essentiality, and the identity of indiscernibles objections.

I shall not devote much effort to temporal persistence. Firstly, as Loux points out, the objection does not arise for bundle theory alone, but is an instance of a more general principle (p. 93). Secondly, Casullo has, to my satisfaction, shown that by construing enduring things as a contingently related series of momentary things – a move available to both bundles and substrata – the objection is only a problem if bundle theory cannot account for momentary things (pp. 127-128).

The essentiality objection – if a thing were a complex of properties, those properties would be essential to it since it could not have different properties and retain its identity – is not dealt with by Casullo as much as accepted as not really a problem. Casullo maintains that the essentiality of properties is only true of momentary things and not enduring things, since the latter are a series of the former (p. 129).

One might wonder if this is not merely a one-step regression. I.e. if an enduring thing were a series of momentary things, would it not be the case that those momentary things were essential to the series? Casullo wants to deny this but it is unclear to me how he can, given the fact that he accepted the argument one step down, avoiding it only by moving up. I see only one way out of an infinite regress; instead of identifying the series primarily with its members and secondarily with the relation we must do the opposite. What gives Series A its individuated identity is not its constituent momentary members but its relational structure of an unbroken causal chain.

The upshot is that if we want to avoid a commitment to temporal instances – as a series of momentary things would demand – we could simply move back down and solve temporal persistence in the same way; albeit at the cost of having to reconsider most of our nouns as verbs. We could always rename it bundling theory if it is too far from its parent.

Last we come to the identity of indiscernibles objection, generally considered the strongest. The Stanford Encyclopedia’s definition is:

The Identity of Indiscernibles (hereafter called the Principle) is usually formulated as follows: if, for every property F, object x has F if and only if object y has F, then x is identical to y. Or in the notation of symbolic logic:

∀F(Fx ↔ Fy) → x=y.

(Forrest)

The objection goes that bundle theory demands the necessary truth of the Principle (PII) since two concrete particulars cannot possibly share all their properties without thereby being the same particular. However, PII is not a necessary truth because we can conceive of two numerically distinct particulars who do share all their properties.

There are many ways in which a bundle theorist might want to respond – some bad (as held by ‘A’ in Zimmerman’s imagined dialogue), some better (as held by Casullo). However, for the sake of brevity I shall not dwell on them. Rather I shall argue that the identity of indescernibles is equally a problem for the substratum theorist.

If we compare PII as expressed by Forrest in the Stanford to its Loux counterpart, it becomes immediately clear that something is amiss. Loux states the Principle as follows:

Necessarily, for any concrete objects, a and b, if for any attribute, Ø, Ø is an attribute of a if and only if Ø is an attribute of b, than a is numerically identical with b (p. 97).

Why have Forrest’s objects x and y been narrowed down from any objects to only concrete objects? Luckily Loux presents us with a retraceable line of argument.

(i)                  Necessarily, for any concrete entity, a, if for any entity, b, b is a constituent of a, then b is an attribute.

(ii)                Necessarily, for any complex objects, a and b, if for any entity, c, c is a constituent of a if and only if c is a constituent of b, then a is numerically identical with b (p. 98).

For convenience I have altered Loux’ (BT) for ‘bundle theory’ and (PCI) for ‘Principle of Constituent Identity’ to (i) and (ii) respectively. Now, (i) seems fine although Casullo suggests changing the necessity to a contingency (p. 131), which would render appeals to conceivable possibilities moot. Yet if we grant (i) and (ii), we should also grant Loux’ version of PII. However, my issue is with (ii). The specification of ‘complex objects’ effectively shields bare substrata from the onslaught of PCI but this begs the question against the bundle theorist. Bare substrata have neither attributes nor constituents so what accounts for their individuated identity? Both the original PII and (ii) – barring arbitrary exclusions – can be applied to bare substrata.

For any bare substrata, a and b, if for any entity, c, c is a constituent/attribute of a if and only if c is a constituent/attribute of b, then a is identical with b.

This holds true since for any given constituent or attribute any substratum will, in and of itself, only possess it if and only if all other substrata also possess it – i.e. no substrata will possess any whatsoever. This means there can be only one substratum. If all substrata are identical, in and of themselves, then Loux’ version of the PII applies equally to concrete objects of substratum theory.

My suggested solution is the same as the one I gave to the temporal persistence and essentiality objections:

A thing is a causal relation of a complex of properties.

I can imagine this would seem completely counter-intuitive to some. However, we are already familiar with at least some things, which we would describe like this. For instance vortices are not constituted by any specific constituents. Nevertheless we should not hesitate to speak of that particular vortex every time we saw it; even if it were to contain none of the same water molecules as last.

The way in which this solves the PII objection is that if we have a specific complex of constituents, there is no contradiction in imagining those constituents performing the qualitatively the same relational event today as yesterday. Neither is it contradictory to suppose that a specific complex of constituents could perform the same relational event twice simultaneously, though it does tax us with a higher level of abstraction. However, it should be noted that the phrase ‘the same relational event’ is misleading in the context of simultaneity, since unless there is a continuous causal connection between instantiations, they give rise to individuated concrete particulars – i.e. twin synchronised vortices.

If doing away with momentary particulars is cause for worry, they can always be reintroduced by a one-step regression as considered in the essentiality objection. I readily grant that a substratum theorist could easily adopt my solution. However, I see no reason to disturb parsimony by an unnecessary multiplicity of entities.

♦

I have argued that the defensibility of bundle theory depends upon the definition and considered three objections; temporal persistence, essentiality, and identity of indiscernibles. The first two were answered by a definition stressing the relation over the complex. I argued the third is equally a problem for substratum, suggesting the previous definition as solution usable by both theories, ultimately favouring bundle as more parsimonious.

♦

Bibliography

Books:

• Loux, Michael J., Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, third ed., 2006)
• Russell, Bertrand, ‘Do We Survive Death?’, Why I am not a Christian (Routledge, 1957)

Journals:

• Allaire, Edwin B., ‘Bare Particulars’, Philosophical Studies 14 (1963), pp. 1-8
• Casullo, Albert, ‘A Fourth Version of the Bundle Theory’, Philosophical Studies 54 (1998), pp. 125-39
• Van Cleve, James, ‘Three Versions of the Bundle Theory’, Philosophical Studies 47 (1985), pp. 95-107
• Zimmerman, Dean W., ‘Distinct Indiscernibles and the Bundle Theory’, Mind 106 (1997), pp. 305-9

Websites:

• Forrest, Peter, “The Identity of Indiscernibles”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/identity-indiscernible/>.
• Irvine, A. D., “Alfred North Whitehead”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/whitehead/>.

♦

Intention

I shall argue against single-mind solipsism and in extension the zombie hypothesis by inference to the best explanation.

Limitations of the Problem

Image by courtesy of A Tribe Called Möw.

The presupposition of the problem is that each person can only ever have direct experience of his or her own mind. Therefore, in lieu of any evidence to the contrary there is no reason to assume that any mind other than one’s own exists. I posit that there are only two ways that this could be the case. Either we must grant veracity to the zombie hypothesis or alternately to the notion of the outside world as a mirage, a dream, or something similarly illusory.

In this essay I shall take a non-illusory outside world for granted. Therefore, I will focus solely on it either being the case that other people do have minds or that they are zombies. I readily grant that an argument against realism would undermine my stance but it would fall outside the scope of this essay. It could be the case that only some people have minds, but since this also requires the existence of zombies I shall treat it as interchangeable with the idea that only one’s own mind exists.

I shall also take the word ‘mind’ more or less for granted. It is conceivable that no two minds are ever even remotely alike and that the word therefore is close to meaningless. However, to allude to Wittgenstein’s famous ‘Beetle in the Box’ analogy (Philosophical Investigations, 1958, §293) it is sufficient for the purpose of my argument that we should see ‘the box’ as containing something as opposed to being entirely void of content. That is, I am not concerned with what precisely – if anything – we mean by the word but just that there is some sort of subjective experience of qualia or internal conscious states present in other people as opposed to none at all.

The Zombie Hypothesis

By ‘the Zombie Hypothesis’ I merely refer to the notion that there are – or could be – entities that are ‘exactly like [me] in all physical respects but have no conscious experiences (Kirk, 2008).’ In this context I am arguing against, single-mind solipsism, by which I mean that one’s own mind is – or could be – the sole mind in existence. Full-blown metaphysical solipsism – wherein the existence of even a reality outside one’s own mind in general is brought into question – is another matter.

We are prone to argue by analogy that we can clearly see other people exhibit behaviour and presumable agency, which in our own case necessitates antecedent mental states. We therefore conclude that they, like us, must possess such mental states. The strongest objection against this is that we are making an unwarranted enumerative inference from a particular instance to a universal affirmative proposition (Blackburn, Problem of Induction, p. 184) – i.e. our behaviour is contingent on having mental states, therefore all such behaviour is a contingence of mental states. Furthermore, as the objection goes, it is not only an unwarranted inference but also a rather weak one at that, since our conclusion rests exclusively on a single, lonesome enumerative premise. This can be likened the conclusion that all aeroplanes are Lufthansa after only ever having seen one single aeroplane (Lecture 3, Lufthansa objection).

They are...eating...the captain!

Inference to the Better Explanation

However, the ‘Lufthansa problem of induction’ is hinged upon the twin assumptions that (a) there are numerous possible propositions, which could have been the case – i.e. a plethora of different airlines, which a plane could have belonged to, or a whole spectrum of colours a swan could have had – and as an extension of this that (b) we are indeed making an attempt at a sound argument for one of these uncountable propositions by enumerative inference alone.

Assuming outside-world realism we should be able to limit the possible propositions to only two – by the principle of excluded middle (Blackburn, p. 124) – and either assert the factuality of the other minds hypothesis or that of the zombie hypothesis. Any encountered non-illusory entity, which displays behaviour associated with agency of mind, must either possess such agency or be a zombie.

As such, the crux of the matter is not which hypothesis we are able to prove conclusively and irrefutably by inductive reasoning. We are not positing an isolated enumerative inference, but rather we are making an inference to the better of only two possible explanations (Herman, 1965). Granted, the single-mind solipsist might still appeal to the metaphysical and logical possibility of zombies, and thereby insist that we cannot know with absolute certainty that other minds exist.

Burden of Proof

However, this sets a rather disingenuous double standard. Surely the hypothesis of other minds does not only share exactly the same metaphysical and logical possibility, it also happens to be a confirmed nomological possibility. If the scarce quantity of enumerative premises to support an inferred conclusion is truly a problem for the other minds hypothesis, then it is even more so for the zombie hypothesis, which cannot boast even a single observation of the proverbial Lufthansa plane. The sceptic of other minds could always retreat behind an infinite regress of possibilities with an ever-increasing unlikelihood.

Nonetheless, one must then wonder – given that the realism of the other minds position is the most reasonable explanation – how come the realist should perpetually bear the burden of proof in the face of a barrage of ever more unreasonable challenges set forth by the fertile imagination of the sceptic? I would surmise that at some point it would be more than appropriate to shift the onus onto the sceptic to show that her arguments from fantasy are also nomologically feasible.

Conclusion

If the single-mind solipsist is unable to provide evidence of either the actual existence of a zombie or the nomological possibility thereof, then it is unclear to me why the onus should be on the realist of other minds to provide good arguments for their existence. By inference to the better explanation we have no reason to concede the possibility that seemingly intentional behaviour could be caused by anything other than the antecedent mental states comparable to our own mind. Each of us knows for a fact that at least one mind exists, while zombies remain fanciful speculation.

♦

To refute the solipsist or the metaphysical idealist all that you have to do is take him out and throw a rock at his head: if he ducks he’s a liar. His logic may be airtight but his argument, far from revealing the delusions of living experience, only exposes the limitations of logic (Abbey, Desert Solitaire, 1990, p. 97).

♦

Bibliography

Lecture handout:

Lecture 3: Other Minds

Journal:

Harman, Gilbert (1965). “The Inference to the Best Explanation,” The Philosophical Review 74:1, 88-95.

Books:

Abbey, Edward, Desert Solitaire: a season in the wilderness, (Simon & Schuster: New York, 1990)

Blackburn, Simon, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, revised 2nd ed. (OUP: New York, 2008)

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, (Blackwell: Oxford, 1958)

Web Pages:

Kirk, Robert, “Zombies”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/zombies/>.

♦

I shall argue that, while it might support the rationality of believing there is an explanation, the fine-tuning version of the teleological argument does not support the rationality of granting any particular explanation – e.g. theism – precedence.

Teleological arguments hinge upon certain attributes of natural phenomena being evidential of intentional purposiveness. Very crudely put; just as a painting must have a painter, so must the creation have a creator. Of course there is far between this simplistic reasoning and its more sophisticated kinship; most importantly, the replacement of question begging with a rationale for why said attributes are indicative of design.

One such common rationale is the improbability of an attribute emerging by blind chance as opposed to the greater likelihood of its emergence by conscious agency. This is the driving force of the fine-tuning version. The improbable attribute to be explained is the structured order of the universal laws. Particularly the emphasis is on their apparent finely tuned suitability to intelligent life.

When faced with this imposing list [of such “happy cosmic accidents.”], it’s shocking to find how many of the familiar constants of the universe lie within a very narrow band that makes life possible (Kaku, 2006, p. 247).

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An existing universal lawmaker, who desired intelligent life, would be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why the laws allow it. Nonetheless, while certainly true, this immediately raises the question of why we should grant intelligent life the privilege of being such an end-goal. A much-used defence against the strong anthropic principle – stating that the universe had to permit the emergence of observers (Le Poidevin, 1996, p. 59) – is simply to turn it into a weak one. Perhaps most famously expressed by Douglas Adams:

[it] is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in – an interesting hole I find myself in – fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it! (Digital Biota 2, 1998)’

However, Adams’ quip contains more than the superficial banality of a mere weak anthropic ‘wherever you go, there you are!’ If the hole is analogous to the universe and its shape represents one possible permutation of its laws, then Adams is entertaining the notion of observer-emergence independent of any particular permutation – i.e. a puddle would form snugly in any hole. Granted, such speculation of alternative biochemistry – e.g. non-carbon based life – is unverifiable science fiction. However, while the atheist cannot claim hypothetical alternative life-permitting universes, neither can the theist claim its negation. Though the recent discovery of fungi living on gamma radiation (Calvo, 2002) leaves something to be said for the potentiality of unlimited strangeness in life, it is fair to say that the latter assumption might not be as speculative as the former. Then again, the former is not being used as a premise for an even more speculative conclusion.

By no means is the argument unsalvageable, however, since it is unclear why it should require the strong anthropic principle. After all, the improbable attribute under consideration is the ordered structure of the laws – not their alleged purpose. It is easily imaginable then that conscious observers are just a by-product of God’s true purpose for creation. Presumably if God desired a universe containing black holes then it would have to include matter dense enough to allow gravitational singularities and carbon-based life alike. It is perhaps not as intuitively comforting as to believe all to be for one’s own benefit. But who would presume certainty that a supreme being does not fancy black holes over humans?

Could we then explain the improbability of our universal laws by altering our newly formulated strong black hole principle into a weaker version as with its anthropic counterpart? It seems unlikely without invoking modal realism or fecund universes theory. Accepting the actual existence of many worlds in order to escape the existence of God seems arbitrarily discriminatory (unless you are a quantum physicist and therefore believe that there is bona fide evidence for a multiverse). However – as with our previous considerations of alternative biochemistry – it is not necessary to grant any veracity to these speculations. Their mere conceivability still acts as a wedge between the premises of the fine-tuning argument and its conclusion.

The theist could still insist on an inference to the best explanation. Yet it remains to be seen why God’s agency is any better an explanation than the rest. The accuracy of such an inference depends on our knowledge of (i) preferably all – or at the very least most – of the possible explanations and (ii) the conditional framework in which they are competing to assess them against. We do not know (i) because it could be almost any imaginable or unimaginable thing. Neither do we know (ii) because we are attempting to explain the origin of the very framework with which we normally assess such matters.

One could say that the best explanation is the most probable one. However – as Le Poidevin argues in Arguing for Atheism (1996, pp. 49-54) – this is amenable to exactly the same critique:

[…] if the probability of events is determined in part by the laws of physics, what can it mean to talk of the probability of the laws of physics themselves? (loc. cit.)

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After being stripped of the persuasive lure of appeals to design or probability, the fine-tuning argument is left to fend only with measly demands of ‘…but surely the universe did not originate arbitrarily? Why precisely these laws?’ These are perfectly valid concerns and few people think the universe ‘just happened.’ But atheism does not commit to that. It is disingenuous to present the issue as if one must either accept arbitrariness or God.

It is true that if God exists then the likelihood of a human existence is greater than not. However, as we have explored the same is true for any number of speculative explanations – with the added worry of those we have yet to think of. Inasmuch as the fine-tuning argument supports the rationality of any belief, it can only support that there is an explanation. To go from there to the assertion of God as the explanation to the exclusion of other possibilities is a textbook example of a fallacious ‘God of the gaps’ argument.

♦

I find it hard to believe that anybody would ever use the anthropic principle if he had a better explanation for something. I’ve yet, for example, to hear an anthropic principle of world history (Guth, Alan, cf. Lightman, 1990, p. 479).

.

Bibliography

Books:

Kaku, Michio, Parallel Worlds: The science of alternative universes and our future in the cosmos, (Penguin Books: London, GB, 2006)

Le Poidevin, Robin, Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, (Routledge: New York, US, 1996)

Lightman, Alan, and Roberta Brawer, Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern
Cosmologists, (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass, 1990)

Journals:

Calvo, Ana M. Et al. “Relationship between secondary metabolism and fungal development”, Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews (September 2002) p. 447-459, Vol. 66, No. 3

Web Pages:

Adams, Douglas, “Is there an Artificial God?” (speech), Digital Biota 2 (September 1998), URL = < http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/>.

Ratzsch, Del, “Teleological Arguments for God’s Existence”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/teleological-arguments/>.

Lecture slides:

Lecture 7: Analyzing Teleological Arguments.

♦

Intention

In this essay I shall argue that the modal version of the cosmological argument for the existence of God is either not sound or not a problem for atheism.

Briefly on the Concept of ‘God’

For the purpose of this essay I assume that by ‘God’ we mean a sentient entity in possession of all the classical omni- characteristics. However, it should be noted that any sentient force, which could be said to have brought about the world, as we know it, would do. Admittedly, as religious commentator, Alan Watts, says in one of his lectures ‘sophisticated Christians [...] think beyond images’ and ‘[do] not imagine that God is a cosmic male parent with a white beard sitting on a golden throne above the stars (Watts, 1996, p. 74).’ Suffice it to say that if by ‘God’ we do not even refer to a personal creator but something more ineffable still, then I take no issue with that other than on a trivially semantic level, and my critique ceases to apply. However, it also ceases to be a problem, since such sophistry is atheism in anything but name.

The Modal Cosmological Argument

I shall base my analysis loosely on the modal cosmological argument as it is presented in Arguing for Atheism (Le Poidevin, 1996, pp. 8-9). With that in mind I shall take some liberties of my own. These are intended as an attempt at strengthening the argument against my own critique and will hopefully not misconstrue it.

Arguably the question at the heart of cosmological arguments is ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ Modal logic is the study of expressions pertaining to necessity and possibility (Garson, 2009). That we are able to ask the question seems to imply that it is conceivably possible that nothing would have existed at all. Therefore, the fact that there are existing things, which do not necessitate their own existence, leads to the conclusion that their existence requires an independent, necessarily existing explanation. In my own words:

1.    Everything, which could have failed to exist, requires an explanation for why it does.
2.    Only necessarily existing things are self-explanatory.
3.    Therefore, there must be a necessary ultimate explanation for every contingently existing thing.
4.    (An inclusion I would rather avoid for reasons I shall make clear) ‘The universe’ is such a contingently existing thing.

Why the Concept of Causality is Irrelevant

In Le Poidevin’s rendition of the argument the word ‘cause’ is consistently used. I should like to abandon it in favour of ‘explanation,’ since the former is unnecessarily problematic. ‘Cause’ implies a temporally preceding chain of events. There is no reason to assume that creation from God’s perspective should be temporally situated at the farthest preceding event from ours. That is not to say God must have an entirely atemporal existence, as this too would be unnecessarily problematic. God just need not be located at the beginning of our timeline. Consider this by analogy of computer-simulations. It is entirely possible to program a computer to count numbers but start it off at say 354. From the programmer’s perspective the simulation began at some time – or perhaps multiple times in the case of repeated runs – on our timeline and began at 354 in the simulated timeline. However, for a hypothetical person living in the simulation it all started at zero. Or perhaps it stretches infinitely back into the negative integers.

The Universe

I have also sought to avoid mentioning the concept of ‘the universe.’ The word seems to be taken for granted. However, my intuitive understanding of it would wreak havoc on the cosmological argument. To me it just means something akin to ‘the set of everything there is.’ In this sense it would simply be ludicrous to insist that the existence of the universe requires an explanation, as ‘the universe’ is not an existing entity in itself but simply a word used to collectively denote all existing entities. Moreover, it would make no sense to speak of something existing outside of all there is. Clearly I must give the theist the benefit of the doubt and conclude that she means something radically different from what I do.

As with the word ‘cause’ I should like to replace it with something less problematic – but what? I must admit being at a complete loss. Supposedly we could replace it by ‘everything physical.’ However, this raises equally problematic questions as to what ‘physical’ means, and whether the fact that every particular physical entity is contingent – if granted – can be extended to physicality in general. Also it seems to beg the question to a physicalist, to whom the very idea of non-physical existence requires prior justification. Not to mention that it would invite a problem reminiscent of dualism’s mind-body problem (Robinson, 2008), in that it is unclear how something non-physical could explain physical existence.

A Face on the Ineffable

We could simply revert back to the initial question of why anything would exist at all. However, this would do the theist no favours since the modal cosmological argument is precisely an attempt to render this very question meaningless. If the ultimate explanation of all other existence itself exists necessarily, then there could not possibly have been nothing. The contingency of existence would therefore have to be localised and not applicable to all existence. Are we then speaking of different categories of existence? If so, how do we distinguish them?

The theist could still insist that the universe is contingent. I should then be very interested in learning what this intriguing word entails. However, I would posit that it poses no problem for the atheist. Atheism does not require one to deny the existence of everything other than the universe – regardless of what is meant by ‘universe.’

Conclusion

If the theist can appeal to the necessity of existence, then so can the atheist. Inasmuch as this is all the argument shows the atheist can simply refuse to acknowledge a personification of the ultimate explanation. It might be a sound argument albeit not one for the existence of ‘God’ as previously defined.

The theist would be required to justify that ‘God’ understood specifically as a sentient creator is, in fact, necessary. However, if such an ontological argument were to be achieved successfully, there should be no need for cosmological arguments.

♦

[I]f by ‘God,’ one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying… it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity (Sagan, Carl).

Bibliography

End-quote:

The quote is widely attributed to Carl Sagan and cited in numerous books, yet oddly enough never with the inclusion of a proper reference. As such I have included it by virtue of its own merits regardless of its dubious authenticity. A possible origin of the quote can be found in:

Sagan, Carl, Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science (Ballantine Books, 1993, CA, p. 330)

Books:

Le Poidevin, Robin, Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Routledge: New York, US, 1996)

Watts, Alan, Myth and Religion: The Edited Transcripts (Tuttle Publishing, US, 1996)

Web Pages:

Garson, James, “Modal Logic”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/logic-modal/>.

Robinson, Howard, “Dualism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/dualism/>.

Image blatently stolen from booksshouldbefree.com

♦

In this essay I shall argue in agreement with Mill but propose a modified liberalism in response to prevailing critiques.

Mill contends that every individual is entitled to liberty to the point where it infringes upon that of others.

It is worth noting that the use of ‘self-protection’ might be misleading. Suffice it to say that Mill is not merely referring to the self-protection of oneself but to the self-protection of mankind in general. Therefore, it is not the case that Mill’s liberalism requires one to stand passive observer to a perpetrator’s infliction of harm upon others. In the very next passage Mill goes on to say:

That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others (Mill, 1865, p. 6).

What constitutes harm to others? We all agree that some acts are indubitably harmful and others not – yet it is difficult to draw the precise line between the two.

Should offensiveness be considered harmful to others? Mill argues no (ibid., p. 31) because any argument, which holds any weight, is offensive to those whose opinion it is directed at. It is therefore prudent to make a distinction between distress and harm. It can be argued that offence necessarily entails distress. Yet if we are to remain consistent, distress alone cannot count as harm.

What then of inconvenience? Can an act, which will consequently cause other people great trouble, be considered harmful? It would certainly be an inconsiderate act, yet we should perhaps be disinclined to go as far as decreeing it harmful. A man committing suicide might be considered sovereign over his body and mind (ibid., p. 6) and therefore well within his liberty. Even if this would assuredly be inconvenient and distressful to someone, we have already established that distress in itself is not sufficient to curtail individual liberty.

However, if we concede the point that an inconsiderate act of inconvenience to others does not necessarily qualify as harm. What then is our justification for legislating against theft  – provided the thief is careful enough to merely steal to the point of inconvenience, never crossing into the realm of harm?

An answer to this challenge might be found in Mill’s assertion that:

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it (ibid., p. 8).

Theft on a small enough scale might fall short of depriving an owner of his liberty to pursue own ends. Nevertheless, theft of any kind, no matter the scale, must at least be considered an impediment of the proprietor’s efforts to obtain the commodity in question. This then might seem as relinquishing the claim that the prevention of harm and protection thereof is the sole justification for the exertion of power over a person against their will.

I would contend, though, that this is an underestimate of how far the applicability of the concept ‘harm’ extends. Harm might not only be interpreted as the act of damaging a person’s mind or body. Rather in this context ‘harm’ is properly understood as the act of damaging a person’s pursuit of his own good – by deprivation and impediment alike.

However, I should now argue against Mill in that this newly gained understanding will also have relevance to our previous consideration of inconvenience. Any individual is, by all means, the sovereign of his own mind and body – yet within the constriction of responsibility for not letting either become an impediment to others by sheer selfish recklessness. In other words, even within the liberty to do as one pleases one would still be obliged to a modicum of self-preservation – if not merely for one’s own sake then that of others. This, I would claim, is entirely consistent with the Principle of Liberty and as such might also serve as an incomplete response to a communitarian objection of liberalism’s devaluation of community (Bell, 2008).

An issue raised in An Introduction to Political Philosophy by Jonathan Wolff is that of public indecency (Wolff, 2006, pp. 126-127). Wolff argues that there is an apparent incongruity between Mill’s condemnation of public indecency (Mill, 1865, p. 58) and his Liberty Principle. Wolff argues by the example that sexual intercourse between husband and wife would be in no way condemnable if performed in privacy, yet deemed unacceptable in public. Should Mill not bite the bullet since, by his own insistence, offence is not enough to invoke the principle of harm?

This ties in with our previous consideration that distress alone does not sufficiently justify the censorship of free expression – even if that expression is coitus on a sidewalk. Consistency then demands that we must either allow such indecency, ban freedom of speech alongside it, or somehow make the case that even public indecency is an impediment to the general freedom.

At this point it is helpful to consider the distinction between positive and negative liberty (Carter, 2008). Since all must share the public sphere, the appropriateness of any action must be weighed on the scale of the freedom to do the deed versus that of others from being exposed to it.

An ongoing controversy is that of the Westboro Baptist Church protesting at funerals against homosexuality (Booth, 2007). By our previously established principles their freedom to do so is only an entitlement up to the point where it impedes the bereaved in their freedom from being exposed to such insensitivity at a time of grievance. The example of public coitus might seem trivial in comparison but the same principles apply. Speaking your mind on the radio is freedom of speech because anyone is free to turn it off. Incessantly speaking your mind while tailing someone around against her will is harassment.

In conclusion, I agree that mankind’s sole justification for interference with liberty is self-protection of members from harm. Inasmuch as ‘harm’ is understood in the broad sense of deprivation and impediment of freedom – even to a degree where others become intrinsically involved in the individual’s well-being. I dissent from Mill in willingness to consider individuals entirely as islands, yet I believe my position adheres to the Liberty Principle with the added benefit of greater consistency against prevailing criticism.

♦

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main (Donne, 1959, p. 108).

Bibliography

Books:

Donne, John, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: Together with Death’s Duel (University of Michigan Press, 1959)

Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty, (Longman, Green et. al., 1865)

Wolff, Jonathan, An Introduction to Political Philosophy, revised ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)

Websites:

Bell, Daniel, “Communitarianism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/communitarianism/>.

Booth, Jenny and agencies, “US anti-gay church that demonstrates at military funerals fined $10.9m”, Times Online (November 1, 2007) URL = <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2783974.ece/>

Carter, Ian, “Positive and Negative Liberty”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/liberty-positive-negative/>.

In crossing a beach, suppose I pitched my foot against a watch, and were asked how it came to be there. I might possibly answer, that it had lain there since the beginning of time when God created it and placed it there.

But suppose I had found a grain of sand upon the beach, and it should be inquired how the grain happened to be in that place. I should hardly concede the same legitimacy to this question as to the one I had been previously asked – that this particular grain of sand somehow stood out in contrast with its peers in demand of a special explanation for its whereabouts. After all, it is all good and proper to lend oneself to the ponderance of anomalies, but an anomaly repeated a billion times over quickly becomes an expected regularity with no means to cause undue perplexity. I should therefore rightly think the question daft.

Yet why should not this objection serve for the grain of sand as well as for the watch? For this reason, that, when we come to inspect the grain of sand, we find that – unlike the watch – it has no parts put together for a purpose. We do not think that the grain attests to a creator in the same way as the watch. We presume not that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, a vast range of artificers with little grain-shops wherein they toil to assemble the best quality sand-grains for capital gain, and who designed the grain’s beachy function.

If indeed it is so, that for every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, the same might be said to exist in nature. What then – which unearthly and inexplicable lapse in judgement – would ever compel you to pick up the watch in contemplation of its anomalous placement instead of doing the exact same to every single grain of sand in the immediate vicinity?

Were there indeed an artificer of natural phenomena an accurate depiction of the situation would not be that of walking on a beach of grains containing a single watch. Rather it could be likened to walking on a heap of tiny little watches with cawing watches flying around in the watch-coloured sky occasionally to swoop down into the waves of liquid watches to catch a swimming watch to eat. In the distance you might hear the joyful laughter of playing watches and the sound of their warden-watch telling them that there is watch for dinner and they should come into the watch to sit down at the watch to eat. Remember to wash your watches before you dig in!

In a world of magic watch-making governed in its entirety by the whims of a magical watch-maker, and where nothing exists that is not a watch, why would you ever ponder the explanation of anything? It should be no more surprising to find an intricately designed laptop at the surface of one of Jupiter’s moons than it is to find a drop of water in the ocean. A living and breathing dragon or a fairy in your cup-board should hold no greater degree of strangeness to you than a lion or a zebra in Africa.

By all means the universe should be entirely devoid of wonder because anything, no matter how bizarre, could pop into existence by decree of the watch-maker at any moment. Nothing ought to merit any sort of explanatory research because a world run on say-so should have no need of causal contingency. A lamp need not be shining because it is hooked up to an electrical outlet. It might just be obeying orders. A perceived sound does not necessarily stem from anything causing it. It might as well have just spontaneously formed in your inner ear because the watch-maker designed it so.

Why did you pick up the watch? There is nothing to distinguish it from anything else. There is nothing special about a watch among a world of watches, right?

Image utterly unrelated, yet strangely enthralling. Courtesy of A Tribe Called Möw.

What is technological determinism?

What we have seen is that the development of ever more powerful technologies does entail great risks that this technology may be put to destructive use. […] It is for this reason that pessimistic critics of technology talk about technological systems and technical practices (techniques) rather than about devices. They see these systems as embodying values beyond those which are evident in selection of the ends intended to be achieved by technological means. The instrumental criterion ‘efficiency’ masks the presence of those values. If efficiency is a measure of the ratio of costs to benefits, how costs and benefits are counted becomes crucial; costs to whom, benefits to whom and of what type? (Loc. Cit., p. 21)

It is difficult to characterise the determinist view without simultaneously contrasting it with that of the instrumentalist. It can be argued that instrumentalism naturally precedes determinism in that thinking of technology as determined to an outcome beyond human control emerges from the ever-increasing complexity and systemisation of technological products and the abstruseness of their infrastructure. After all, a hunter-gatherer, who just created a flint-axe is not likely to think that it controls him.

The determinist view is not necessarily that any singular artefact holds any intrinsic political value – although a strong case could be made for the personal computer or the cellular phone – but that with technological artefacts and the framework of interaction between them becoming steadily the backdrop of our daily lives, human beings themselves have become part of technology. Cogs in the machinery as it were.

Pessimists […] tend to treat technological systems as part of the reality within which people live and work; indeed technological systems constitute this environment by functioning to create and sustain it (Loc. cit.).

The classical examples are that of office and factory workers having no choice but to work in accordance with the standards set by their respective machines and the technological environment (Ibid, p. 22). However, to return to the example of the scythe one might easily imagine a scenario wherein it was decided to pour resources into the improvement and production of scythes for increased efficiency and benefit. Yet, a crucial question raised by determinism would be whose benefit we are speaking of – efficiency to what ends? Advancement in the quality and quantity of scythes is not likely to be of any significant benefit to a carpenter. Therefore, even what initially seemed like such an obviously instrumentalist unit could – if seen in a broader context – easily become a deterministic, politically value-laden privilege of one group over another.

The perspective is the consequences of implementing a specific technology into the context of which environmental systems already exist. Therefore – again without it having to always be the case – technological determinism is commonly coupled with pessimism. Not because human beings are necessarily incompetent or prone to use technology for harm, but because they themselves are part of the big technological machinery, which mercilessly grinds its own capricious course into the unforeseeable future.

Seen in this light technological progress will be something to be critical, wary, and extremely cautious of at the risk of inadvertently making a wrong turn into a dead-end alley with no means of turning back from a future in technological bondage. A technological dystopia, where mankind has become enslaved in a spider-web of his own devices. A classical example in popular culture would be the vision of future society as seen in the film The Matrix (Wachowski, 1999).

Important Differences

Since the superficial differences of the two theories should be fairly self-evident by their descriptive features alone, I shall rather focus on an analytical comparison of what I propose would be the advantages and disadvantages in understanding the nature of technology through the lenses of each perspective.

Instrumentalism, unlike determinism, places the responsibility of technological advancements and its consequences squarely in the lap of humanity. However, it does so at the possible risk of ignoring the profound far-reaching and unforeseeable implications technological changes might impart upon our social norms. The advantage is personal accountability and responsibility, the incentive to initiate improvement, and an aversion towards stagnation.

Determinism, unlike instrumentalism, raises awareness to potential dangers and unintentionally malign complications that uncritical acceptance of new technologies could cause. However, it does so at the cost of individual autonomy and at the risk of stunting an experimental approach to the introduction of new technologies, which might have yielded unpredicted benign results. The advantage is critical thinking, a greater understanding of the holistic whole, and an aversion towards naivety.

Since both approaches have both advantages and disadvantages, instead of opting for a single one, I propose a synthesis.

Conclusion

Why must the choice be between optimistic instrumentalism or pessimistic determinism? Why could it not be symbiotic realism? We should not adopt changes uncritically but neither should we halt change entirely and indefinitely. We should not think of technology as a mere tool but neither should we think of it as a leash. Holism and reductionism are different perspectives of looking at the same subject and neither approach provides a complete understanding in itself.

It is my contention that we ought to think of the relationship between mankind and technology as a symbiosis and make use of instrumentalism and determinism in accordance with their realistic applicability in any given circumstance.

I think Isaac Asimov sums this kind of relationship between continued progress and reflected decision-making thereof beautifully in the following passage:

It is change, continuing change inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the word as it will be – and naturally this means that there must be an accurate perception of the world as it will be. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our Everyman, must take on a science fictional way of thinking, whether he likes it or not or even whether he knows it or not. Only so can the deadly problems of today be solved (1999).

It is my contention that a sensible understanding of technology in the modern world requires that we think of human beings controlling technology and technology controlling humans in turn as being equally true.

♦

There’s a misconception that a movement in any direction is progression (Germaine Williams, 1995).

Acknowledgements

My girlfriend, Ása Johannesen, deserves thanks for providing helpful comments.

Bibliography

Course handout:

LECTURE 3: Conflicting visions of technology

Books:

Tiles, Mary and Oberdiek, Hans, ‘Conflicting visions of technology,’ in Living in a Technological Culture. Human Tools and Human Values (Routledge, 1995, pp. 12-31) COURSEPACK

Asimov, Isaac, ‘My Own View,’ in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Holdstock, ed., (London: Octopus Books, 1978, p. 5)

Films:

Wachowski, Larry and Wachowski, Andy, The Matrix (Hollywood: Warner Bros., 1999)

TV-series:

Rodenberry, Gene, Star Trek (USA: 1966 – )

Musical albums:

Williams, Germaine, ‘Poet Laureate II,’ track no. 11 on Rip The Jacker, (New York: Babygrand Records, 1995)